


Ashes of Perception

by mcrshank



Category: Chronicles of Narnia - All Media Types, Chronicles of Narnia - C. S. Lewis, Doctor Who
Genre: Alternate Universe, F/M, an au of my own story Auric Idolatry, so basically what if Thirteen had run into Edmund and had helped him get back to Narnia
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-07-06
Updated: 2020-07-07
Packaged: 2021-03-05 01:40:58
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence, Major Character Death
Chapters: 7
Words: 22,076
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/25116313
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/mcrshank/pseuds/mcrshank
Summary: It has been a year since Edmund Pevensie returned to England, and when a strange woman breaks into his boarding school claiming to be looking for ghosts, his whole life takes a sudden turn for the better. This woman's name is The Doctor, and with her help, Narnia and everything he left behind within it, are in his reach once again.
Relationships: Juliet Capulet & Edmund Pevensie
Kudos: 12





	1. CLASSROOM

**Author's Note:**

> This is not a story I plan to continue; the idea came to me because of an RP thread that never went anywhere between me (playing Edmund) and someone else who played Thirteen. It was an unfinished thread (only three replies depicted in the two first chapters), and I was dying to know where it would have gone. This is what became of it.
> 
> It might seem like a rather sudden end, but because of the fact that I didn't want to go to the trouble of fixing Prince Caspian to happen two years earlier than I headcanoned it to happen, I just finished the story at the point in which everyone agrees to do something for Narnia. It is the end, and I will not write more about it. If you want to know more about the stories Edmund told The Doctor or anything that Juliet is talking about in their reunion, please do feel free to head over to the series "Auric Idolatry", the first book is already out (it depicts my version of the Golden Age), books two and three should come out in the next couple of years.
> 
> Thank you for reading! Hope you enjoy!

It should have been perfectly easy to pretend to be normal in a school so full of absolutely ordinary kids, but it didn’t feel that way. The world had changed in the mind of Edmund Pevensie, and nothing so simple as coursework or revising seemed worthy of being even noted. Not when a warrior rested deep within the boy’s heart; not when a man of twenty-five hid in the young and fragile body of an eleven-year-old child.

Not when a King walked crownless under the plainness of a boarding school uniform.

It should have been no surprise, then, that more times than not, Edmund wished and managed to stay away from all the kids around him who saw the world as nothing more than a playground. After all, neither of them could understand his anger when they started talking about the war like it was a game. And, sure, there _was_ Peter to talk to, but the truth was that, though Edmund had taken the return to England horribly, his older brother had taken it worse.

Edmund had cried and literally scratched at the back of the wardrobe, hoping to head back to Narnia, but Peter… he, like Susan, had become silent. He had cried in the middle of the night, he had woken up from nightmares over and over again, and he continued to talk about Narnia like something they were sure to get back to at some point. But out there, in what Susan called the _real_ world, Peter rarely spoke; and when he did, it was almost too much like he was trying as hard as Susan to pretend Narnia had never been real at all.

He simply couldn’t deal with that anymore.

Of course, it wasn’t as if he could leave the school, cross the street, and spend his time with Lucy in the girl’s school, either. It didn’t matter that she was the only one of the four who continued to love and believe in Narnia as strongly as he did. Plainly, he wasn’t sixteen; he didn’t have the freedom of leaving the school whenever he felt like it the way the older ones did. And even if he did, he doubted St. Mary’s would allow him, a boy, to play with one of their youngest charges in their care, even if he was her brother.

Thus, solitude became his best friend, and the time when everyone was at bible study became his favourite to roam the halls of St. Johns. Usually, every single one of his walks was uneventful. But that day, as his mind wondered for the millionth time when Aslan would call them back to Narnia, a loud noise of crashing and complaining made the boy stop in his tracks. Curiosity became the loudest emotion in his brain.

No one was supposed to be outside of the chapel at that hour; not even him, though he had managed to break that rule for months by then. Therefore, his mind ran wild. Was he about to catch one if his classmates in some childish prank for one of the professors? Was he about to interrupt something much more graphic that could get some stupid student expelled? As his hand held and turned the knob of the room the noise had come from, he began to smile.

Almost as quickly as the excitement had come, though, it disappeared, and his sense of curiosity only heightened. Instead of the mischievous boy he had expected to catch, Edmund found himself face to face with a woman. She was standing wildly from the ground, and a couple of desks and chairs were resting sideways on the floor. It was clear she had come in through the window, and her landing had been anything but graceful.

The woman was rather tall as she stood, though lately anyone seemed taller than him. She had shoulder-length blonde hair, big blue eyes, and the strangest sort of clothes Edmund had ever seen in his life—a pair of strange blue trousers that barely reached halfway to her calf and were held in place by a pair of yellow suspenders, a long grey and blue coat, brown tattered boots with blue socks, and a sort of button-less shirt that had a weird sort of rainbow right across her chest. Whomever she was, she was _definitely_ not from around here.

She was staring right at him and reaching towards her right pocket.

“Stop; don’t move!” Edmund said, finding himself reaching for his sword on his left out of habit. But, of course, it wasn’t there.

Still, the woman lifted her hands in the air and said, “I can explain.”

Though Edmund felt completely vulnerable, he stood so straight and so confidently, that he wasn’t surprised to see the woman frown. “Well, go on, then,” he encouraged, crossing his arms. The look in his eyes was surely as stern as it had been all those times he’d had to bring justice to one creature or other back at home. “Explain.”

He was no longer Edmund Pevensie, the child. Instead, alone, with no one but that woman to see, he was King Edmund, The Just once more.

“I… well, I’m… you know…” The woman started looking all around the room as if looking for inspiration. But then she didn’t say any more, and the corners of Edmund’s lips began to lift.

How many times had he seen the same hesitation in creatures that had done wrongfully back in Narnia? He released a humourless scoff and began to turn around. “I’m calling the Headmaster.”

“No, wait!” She called behind him. “I-I’m-oh! I’m hunting for ghosts.”

That, at least, made Edmund pause. Slowly, with a frown in the middle of his forehead, he turned around.

She smiled widely enough to make him think she looked triumphant. “Really. I have-hold on, let me find… I know it’s just in here.” Right in front of him, she began rummaging in her pockets and throwing away anything that was not what she was looking for. Off flew a packet of sunflower seeds, followed by a bag of dog treats and a partly eaten peach. And then, “Aha! Here they are. Like I was saying, I have credentials. Go on, look at them!”

“Ghosts?” He asked, frowning. She was showing him a strange rectangular artefact that seemed too much like one of those laminated things the professors carried about hanging from their pockets. “Why would you be looking for—” But his words broke away the second his eyes fell on what waited brilliantly under the plastic screen she held out for him to see.

It was a familiar-looking parchment written by the equally recognisable hand of Lord Peridan of Narnia. It was sealed with the Lion of the royals, and it allowed,

 _…the carrier of this document access to any building and castle_  
 _in any world sister to the Narnian realm. In the name of High  
King Peter, __King Edmund, King Susan and Queen Lucy,  
the true monarchs of Narnia._  
 _Signed,_ **Athena Ashdown-Pevensie,** Regent of Narnia.

“You’re…” Edmund began, snatching the artefact from her hand and frowning at it. He felt like his heart had risen up in flight. “You’re a Narnian Knight.”

“What?! No, I’m—”

“How are you here?” He finally asked, looking hopefully to the woman and finding himself unable to fight a smile. “Are we finally to go back?”

“Back?” She asked, shaking her head slowly. Her nose had scrunched at some point.

Edmund felt desperate. “Are we not? Please… what is he waiting for? We—”

“Could I please have that back?” The woman interrupted, frowning and motioning at the parchment in his hands.

Frowning, the boy handed back the parchment. “Look, never mind that. I guess… I know you’re probably supposed to be careful,” he said, stepping further into the room and closing the door behind him. _Just in case._ “That’s why you won’t tell me the truth, right?” He faced the woman again.

She’d started turning the laminated artefact in her hands as if studying it; then, she started rummaging in her pockets again.

Edmund sighed. “By the lion, you can cut the act. It’s okay. I won’t tell anyone. It’s not like anyone would even believe me other than my brother and sisters. I’m… I’m Edmund,” He finally told her. “ _King_ Edmund. I know you might think it impossible, I _know_ I look younger, I-I guess time works so different between our worlds that when we returned here we went back to being children, but…

“We didn’t _mean_ to leave. It was just—” His head shook. What sort of _king_ bothered knights with his troubles? So he cleared his throat. “I mean, whatever it was, it’s still me. I may not look like much, but I’m still me, and whatever reason Aslan sent you here, I can help. He wouldn’t have sent you to Peter and I’s school for nothing, so just tell me what you need, and—what are you doing?” 

The woman, who didn’t appear to have been paying attention to his words, had taken out a weird-looking silver pen and was pointing it at the plastic-covered parchment in her hands. Instead of a place where ink could come out, though, her pen had a crystal-like dome that shone orange and made a weird sound as it moved.

“I’m making sure there’s nothing wrong with the psychic paper, or, as a matter of fact...” She, then, pointed the pen in his direction. It started making its weird noise again as it pointed from his head to his toes. The woman began shaking her head. “Mm, nope. I don’t get any alien signals from you, either.”

“Alien signals?” Edmund echoed, frowning again. “What are you talking about?”

“Look, uh… Edmund, you said, right?” He nodded; she looked at the little pen again like it could explain all sorts of things, then looked at him again. “I’m sorry to break it to you like this, but… I don’t know what you’re talking about. I’m not a… knight; I’m just a time traveller. I’m The Doctor. I’d usually let the psychic paper build a story for me, but this time it made something up I simply cannot keep up with, so—”

“But you gave me that parchment!” He motioned to the thing in her hands. “That parchment says that—”

“I’m sorry, but it isn’t a parchment. This…” She lifted the laminated artefact she had shown him before. “It’s called a psychic paper. It has a sort of technology that shows you whatever you want to see. Sort of like this, see?” An equally embarrassed and apologetic smile spread across her face as she held the leather to her forehead.

Right before Edmund’s eyes, the Narnian parchment disappeared, and in its place appeared a series of circles and lines that absolutely made no sense to him. His heart began to fall all the way to his feet. When the woman lowered the object from her forehead, Edmund had to look away. “This… it’s my written language. I’m not from here, you see. I’m not from Earth. I’m—”

“Stop,” Edmund said, lifting a hand the way he might have done to politicians in Narnia. He took a step away from her. “Please, just… stop.”

Thankfully, the woman pressed her lips in a line.

Not only had he been making a fool of himself in front of a stranger, but, without having even realised it, a sort of hope had risen inside his chest. Now, it vengefully wrapped around his throat like a noose. _You fool,_ it said, _how stupid do you have to be?_

God, he wanted to cry. Truly, he wanted to hide his face on a pillow like he had done during the first few weeks after his return. He wanted to hide and just cry in that silent way he had learnt to all that time ago do so none of his siblings heard him. Because it felt as if he had been spat out from Narnia once again.

The woman remained quiet, and though the world seemed to be disappearing from under Edmund’s feet, the part of his mind that remained an adult king begged him strongly to pull himself together so he could find out more. After all, he had kept it together many times before, hearing soldiers had died, hearing friends had perished, hearing that his own wife… he cleared his throat.

“Well, if I could travel to another world through a wardrobe… who’s to say time-travellers and life in other planets are not real too, right?” He mused, sniffing his own shame away and passing a hand against his face to clean any unwanted tears. “You’ve stuff that definitely couldn’t have been made in England, as it is.”

“Right,” The Doctor said, pocketing her artefacts one after the other. “Usually I wouldn’t really lead with the ‘I’m not from this planet’ bit, but this parchment you saw in the psychic paper just makes me think this is a special occasion. Would you mind if I—”

“What exactly do you want here?” Edmund interrupted her, crossing his arms against his chest, and finally looking at her again with a frown. “Why are you _really_ here? You said you were looking for ghosts, but clearly that was a lie too, so why would someone from another planet, who can travel in time, come to an all boy’s school in the middle of England?”

The woman let out a scoffed breath. “Boarding schools are interesting.”

Edmund scoffed, too. “No, really.”

“Oof, you’re very inquisitive, aren’t you? That’s not unusual for a boy your age, and yet… I know I didn’t get any alien signals from you, but I don’t think you’re as old as you seem.” Edmund’s frown disappeared, and his eyes partly widened. “Oh! I’m right! I’m right, aren’t I? You’re not actually a little boy!” She was pointing at him excitedly as if she had just discovered a brand new world wonder. 

Slowly, Edmund shook his head. The Doctor nearly danced with joy in front of him. “This is good; this is new. This is _very_ exciting. How about this: you answer my questions, I’ll answer yours. Come on! Seems only fair.”

“This is _my_ school,” Edmund said, frowning again. “You broke in. I don’t have to answer anything. All I’d have to do is yell and someone would be here in a second, and _you_ would be in serious trouble.”

“Ah, but you haven’t done it,” The woman said, pointing at him again, knowingly. He rolled his eyes; she’d caught him there. “That _must_ mean you have questions. And, of course, you would, I just told you I’m a time-traveller from another planet, who wouldn’t have questions after that?

“Well, _I_ have plenty of questions, too. Because you see, my Sonic never lies, and it says you’re one hundred percent human, but no human kid your age has ever carried themselves the way you do, not in this time. Not when they’re safely away from the bombs and all the war going on in this country. No, you…” She took a step closer to him, but somehow, it didn’t feel menacing.

It felt like what Edmund imagined a scientist would do as they approached a successful experiment they had spent half their life attempting. “You look like you’ve _seen_ war, death _and_ tragedy up close, and it doesn’t make any sense. So, what do you say? Answers for answers? I’m _dying_ to ask the questions.”

Edmund simply didn’t know what to say. Nothing he had ever lived, wither in Narnia or England, could have prepared him for someone to treat him the way the woman in front of him did. Whether it had been prisoners of war, petty criminals, or grownups dealing with him upon his return, no one had ever treated him in such a… conscious way before. As if they were both equals; as if she wasn’t very clearly much older than he looked. As if he were the one holding all the cards in his hands regardless of how she could truly tell him to screw off instead of explaining things like any grown-up might.

It was strange enough that, for a moment, he looked toward the door behind him and frowned.

The woman released a breath. “Come on. Do you want to sit? We should sit.”

He looked at her again; she had literally forgone any of the many chairs around her and settled down on the floor with her legs crossed.

He blinked his confusion away. He knew he could turn around and leave; tell her to get away from his school and pretend he didn’t feel like a bomb had landed on top of him. He knew he could scream and get her in trouble simply by being there. But he also knew that… he could stay. HE could uncross his arms, sit across from her, and ask his questions. Treat her like an equal, just like she had been doing for him all this time. _Seems only fair._

Well… he _was curious._

Thus, he relaxed and nodded. Releasing a breath, Edmund let his arms fall limp to his sides, and forced his little body to find a place to seat across from her.


	2. POSSIBILITIES

“I already asked a question,” Edmund said, crossing his legs and trying hard not to let the cold of the floor get to him. There were chills running down his spine already, so he cleared his throat. “Perhaps you should answer first: what are you _really_ doing here?”

The woman in front of him relaxed and her smile seemed to grow. “Oh, well, I wasn’t lying about that, actually. I _was_ coming in here to look for ghosts. A ghost, really, and he’s not a ghost yet.”

Once again, Edmund frowned. “I don’t follow.”

“Oof,” The Doctor said and shifted on her place. “I have a friend that’d rip me a new one if I told you about this. But, well, I guess if I don’t tell you _everything_ it should all be fine. Just don’t tell anyone I said this, okay? A _lot_ of awful can happen if someone knows; it could change the course of history. Do you promise to keep it to yourself?”

Carefully, Edmund nodded.

“Right, well… one of your schoolmates writes one of my favourite books in the future, but he dies fairly after. So he’s nothing more than a ghost to me. Had a couple of hours free whilst my friends do stuff in their time, so I thought I’d pop round to check in on him, see what he’s like. So, you see, I wasn’t lying. I _was_ looking for a ghost, even if he’s not a ghost yet.”

“Okay…” Edmund allowed. He looked at her the way he had looked at many prisoners before, but she didn’t flinch. She didn’t look away, she didn’t blink too much; she simply didn’t seem to be saying anything but the truth. So he gulped. “Who is it?”

“Ah,” she grimaced and shook her head. “Sorry, no can do. As I said, big repercussions if you find out. You could change history, even without meaning to. Now, my turn,” She leaned forward, and set her elbows on her knees. “You said you were a king, you also said that… time moves differently between here and this other place you thought I was from; is _that_ why you look like a little boy?” Edmund’s jaw locked, but he nodded. “How old are you really, then? And where are you king of?”

Those were way too many questions, and they made Edmund feel like he was going on a free fall off the edge of his own mind. Because, on the one hand, it was great to hear someone that was not related to him ask about Narnia without a speck of doubt that it existed; on the other, talking _about_ Narnia only reminded him that he wasn’t there. He didn’t know if he would rather talk all about it or none at all.

So he cleared the damn knot in the middle of his throat and forced himself to speak. “I just celebrated my twenty-sixth birthday last month.” The Doctor audibly gasped. “We, uh… my siblings and I, we were the kings and Queen’s of a land called Narnia. As I said before… we didn’t mean to leave, but…”

“So why did you?” She asked.

Edmund frowned. “I believe it’s my turn.”

“Oh, right.” The Doctor’s joy deflated right before his eyes. “Well, go on.”

He sat a little straighter. “That… pen with the light. You pointed it at me… why?”

“Pen with the light? What pen with the—oh!!” The woman reached back into her pockets and took out the strange silvery pen Edmund had seen her look at too intently before. “You mean this?”

He nodded.

“It’s my Sonic Screwdriver. I made it. Fixed it so it works on wood, too. I pointed it at you so I could know if _you_ were alien, but you’re not. It has all sorts of technology that can tell me where something came from or what something is. Very handy, that.”

“Huh.”

“Right. So… this Narnia of yours… how’d you get there? How did you leave? _Why_ did you leave?” Her excitement seemed to have returned.

Edmund sighed and crossed his arms against his chest again. “We got in through a wardrobe… a _magic_ wardrobe, I suppose, and… we got out the same way. No time seemed to have passed here, though, so even though we grew up over there and ruled for about fifteen years, we just…” He gulped. He had to wait for a moment, for the knot of sorrow and regret that tended to rise whenever he spoke of Narnia had returned. After a moment, he looked at her again. “We went back to being kids when we returned.

“All four of us, we… we all lost something. My brother’s wife was pregnant, so was mine. Susan, my older sister… _she_ was pregnant, too. We all had made our lives there. I had two other kids, and… my wife, she—” He gulped and began to shake his head. His gaze fell. The knot had risen again, and this time, he wasn’t able to fight the couple of tears that began falling down his cheeks.

For once, the woman no longer sounded excited. “That wardrobe… do you think you could show it to me?” She sounded sombre, careful.

Though he scoffed, he looked at her again. “I wouldn’t be here if the wardrobe was in this school; I would be _there_ with my brother and sisters, protecting the realm, growing old with my wife, bringing up our kids, and ruling the land with…” He released an exasperated sigh as he picked on the hems of his trousers.

“Then again, maybe I would be here anyway. Both Lucy and I tried to get back home through the wardrobe, but it didn’t work. It’s like... that way is closed, and if we ever hope to get back, it will be through some other way. That’s why I thought you might have been…” He trailed off. Once again, he simply couldn’t speak.

He didn’t like the sad way she was looking at him. So he tried to swiftly wipe away the tears from his eyes, and remember that the only reason he was opening up was for the sake of getting answers himself. “You, uh…” He gulped. “What planet are _you_ from? How did you get here, and… why would you come here? I-I know you said to visit this… kid who becomes famous later, but… I mean, at all. Why would you come to _Earth_?”

“Ah, well… I can’t answer the first two questions. I don’t. I never do. I don’t talk about it, sorry. At least, I can tell you that I came here in a space ship, but that’s all.” The Doctor apologetically smiled. “As for why I would come to Earth… well, why not?

“It’s one of my favourite places to visit, actually,” She said. “Humans are amazing creatures. _Most_ of my friends are human. You are all very strong, very… determined and capable of doing so many things and nothing can ever compare to you. I _have_ visited other planets, of course. Many of them _with_ my human friends, but this world of yours just has such a beautiful presence. And the landscapes… I can’t understand why all of you don’t take better care of it, really.

“Now me: I wonder,” She continued as if on the same thought, pocketing her sonic screwdriver again. “Would you be able to tell me where this wardrobe is? I’d like to see it.”

Edmund frowned again. “It’s in the house of the man with whom my siblings and I stayed when the bombs began to fall on London,” he confessed. “Just out past Kent… it felt like it was in the middle of nowhere. Why would you want to see it? I already told you, you can’t go in through there.”

The Doctor gradually leaned forward. “Right, but… I _could_ be able to use the sonic to scan the trace energy on it. Information is all one needs to be able to find a lost world; I’ve found entirely planets that way. Maybe I could help you find a way back like that, but I’d need to be able to see the wardrobe first.

“So…” Tentatively, and much more excitedly, she wrapped her fingers around her ankles. “Hypothetically speaking,” She began. “If… you could take a quick jump in a spaceship over to Kent and be back before anyone missed you… would it be worth it?”

It wasn’t fair. The way his heart began to beat swiftly and loudly against his ears simply wasn’t fair. It sent such a rush onto his hands and feet that, suddenly, he felt exactly as he had when the warmth had begun returning into his body after his time with the witch. All for the hope she so unfairly began to rise into his heart.

To be able to go back, to look upon the Narnian stars once again; to sit on his desk at Cair Paravel whilst his children played with his many trinkets and Juliet read a book on their couch. To see Athena again, to meet his nephew and his own third child… it felt like a dream. Of course, he hadn’t been able to hide his own hope and excitement, and she smiled because of it. Hell, she looked almost as hopeful as he felt.

He had left his life behind, and she was offering to take him back to it.

So he began to nod. He could almost see the sea again, smell the Narnian air. “Narnia is worth _much_ more than all the trouble I could get into for leaving St. John’s, ma’am.” His voice returned, though softly, with the strength it had carried before. The security of a King, the hope of a husband.

“Well, then… let’s do it.” The Doctor said, smiling almost as widely as she had upon meeting him. “Take me to the wardrobe, and I’ll try to help you find a way back to your kingdom.”

“But… h-how?” He wondered. “Could it _truly_ be done? Could you…” He could barely even say it, for the words would make it more real. And if it became real, then the amount of disappointment he would feel upon their failure would be such that perhaps, this time, he would not cry for only a week, but a month. A year.

He would hit anyone who dared make fun of him for it, and the anger he had been able to fight back in Narnia would come back. And yet… even the smallest possibility to see it again, to see his family, his friends, and to be able to bring peace within his mind as much as that of his siblings’ made it feel like, perhaps, it was all worth it. “Could you really take me back?” He finally asked hopefully, gulping down a knot formed by all the hope she had built within him.

Thankfully, she nodded. “Maybe; of course, I can’t promise you that I definitely will, but I can try at least. That’s something, isn’t it?” She began to stand. “And something is usually better than nothing unless the something is Daleks.”

“D… Daleks?” Edmund asked.

“Oh, biggest psychopaths in the universe. Nasty things, really. Don’t suggest running into one alone.” She paused as she dusted off her coat. “Or _ever_ , actually.”

“I see,” but he didn’t; not really. He suddenly became more focused on the fact that he felt absolutely small and insignificant. She was tall, very tall, and he had to look up at her as if he were nothing but the child he looked to be.

He absolutely hated it. He felt powerless, and every bit as he had felt when the betrayal had fallen from his lips towards the White Witch all that time ago.

Still, she didn’t even seem to notice his discomfort as she looked from the door to the window. “Well,” she said as he began to stand, finally looking at him again. “Come on, then. No time to waste!” Excitement surged out from her very presence now. “I’m going to need your help to get the coordinates of this house. Psychic link, probably. No one bothers to log proper coordinates in this time, do they? Not, at least, of a house in the middle of nowhere?”

“I don’t think so,” Edmund agreed, awkwardly setting his hands in his pockets.

“Thought so. Shame, really; it would have been so much easier to just get the coordinates and land the TARDIS inside the house than somewhere near enough. Eh,” The Doctor shrugged and motioned toward the door. “Never mind easy. Easy is boring, figuring out is fun. I like fun. Shall we go?”

Edmund looked toward the door. “Is your… er… space ship inside this school?” He asked her, frowning. “Because unless you tell me this thing is in the next classroom, I think it’d be a bad idea to try leaving through the front door. It’d only get us caught by the headmaster… prayer time is almost over.”

“Right, well… then—”

“The window might be our best bet.” He said before The Doctor could say anything else. “Come on,” he encouraged, walking well past her towards the open window she had stumbled into the room from. “You _must_ have come through here for a reason, so I don’t see why not go out the same way.”

“Wait!” The Doctor said, sprinting to get back to his side; she stopped him moving with a hand on his arm. He’d been getting ready to jump out the window. “Maybe _I_ should go first.”

“Why?” He frowned.

“Well,” she paused. She looked like she was trying to find the right words, and because of it, Edmund immediately understood. He _was_ small. He would probably need her help to land.

Edmund sighed. “Right. Whatever; you go.” He stepped away and crossed his arms.

Looking somewhat apologetic, The Doctor nodded and smiled at him. Then, she began to climb out the window and jumped. When she did, Edmund’s eyes followed her, and on that journey, they accidentally focused on the familiar fenced gardens of St. Mary’s across the street. Only then did he realise the sort of adventure he was about to head out into… without his siblings.

That realisation made him pause.

All this time he had been talking about getting back to Juliet and his children, but what about the others? Would Peter not wish to return to his wife as well? Would Susan not care to see her husband? And Lucy… how unfair would it be to leave her behind when he wouldn’t even _know_ of Narnia if it hadn’t been for her? It didn’t seem fair for him to go, and so he kept looking towards the door uncomfortably.

Should he run to get Peter? Should he tell the Doctor to run and get Susan and Lucy? “Are you coming?” The woman called, and Edmund gulped down the knot of his guilt swiftly.

“Yeah, coming!” It would make no sense to get his siblings when he didn’t even _know_ if they would be able to get to Narnia in the first place. Thus, as he began climbing the window himself, a brand new vow began forming inside his mind. If he and The Doctor found Narnia, if he was somehow able to see his friends and his family again, then he would talk to the blonde under the window so they could come back, pick his siblings up, and return to Narnia at once.

_We never should have left in the first place._

Using all his bravery, and repeating his vow over and over again in his head, Edmund Pevensie pushed himself away from the window and jumped into the gardens below.


	3. TARDIS

Edmund’s small frame had picked up so much velocity that even The Doctor hadn’t been entirely able to stop him from landing harshly on the grass. He had definitely skinned his knee, but there were other, much worse pains he could remember from his past that made the sting on his knee feel like no more than an inconvenience. So he stood from the ground and began dusting his shorts off of rogue blades of grass.

“You good?” The woman asked him, sounding more like a concerned mother than the excited time-traveller she had been moments before.

He wiped away the couple of droplets of blood that had formed on his knee. “Yeah, wonderful.” He lied, cleaning his hand against his sweater. “Now, your ship… I don’t remember seeing a lake or river that connected to the Thames or other near here, so… I’m guessing it’s a flying ship?”

With a somewhat mindless “Hmm,” the woman turned on her boots and straightened her posture before confidently striding off in the direction of the more private gardens of the school. At once, Edmund began running to catch up. “I always forget that people can have such a limited idea of what a ship might be.”

Though Edmund huffed, he said nothing.

“It’s a box that travels throughout time and space.” She said, looking towards the sky, paying no mind to his expression or his silence. “Bit more complicated than flying, but I’d like to think that it’s _just_ as cool.”

When she said ‘box’, the only thing Edmund had been able to think of had been a cardboard box where he would put books or clothes for safekeeping. So, for a moment, he felt as if he were about to jump on a magic carpet and fly to Kent like one of those stories he’d read _Arabian Nights_ a while ago.

His curiosity had grown, and he’d been just about to ask for more information when the familiarity of a blue police box came into sight. That was strange; he had never before seen a police box this deep in the school grounds. What was even stranger was that the woman had stopped walking right in front of it.

“Right, so this is it.” She said. “It’s quite a bit different on the inside than the outside, so beware.” After rummaging through four different pockets, she pulled out a key and began to open the door. “Take a minute, if you need to,” She advised, then. “And remember to breathe. Sometimes people forget, and that’s _always_ an embarrassment. I hate bad first impressions.”

When the door opened, the strangeness of her warning began to make sense. A certain sort of shock drove so deeply within Edmund that breath almost immediately became stuck in the middle of his throat. Without really being aware of it, he began to follow behind her into the police box, and unlike the time he had gone into the wardrobe for the first time, Edmund’s heart began to beat wildly and excitedly against his chest.

First, it was the lights. They were brighter than any he had ever seen and definitely stronger. Then, it was everything else that seemed as complex as the artefacts she had shown him before; the ship was completely enormous. It all settled slowly into his mind as the little doors closed behind him.

“By the Lion…” There were stairs and hallways leading to places opposite from where he stood. There was a giant piece of machinery he didn’t entirely understand settled right in the middle of the whole thing. There were chairs and metal bannisters all around him, and as he stepped along the small hallway away from the door, the true size of the place began to swallow him whole.

It wasn’t logical, but to him, it made perfect sense.

“It’s just like with Narnia.” He said, turning on his step regardless of how he continued walking in the direction of the blonde he suddenly held dearer than any stranger since he had met his wife. Because, suddenly, as the enormity of the ship’s interior befell him, he believed every single thing she had told him, and, for once, he didn’t even doubt that she would be able to take him back home.

He held onto the nearest rail, dizzy with hope.

♦

“Is this another land?” He asked as she focused intently on the levers and buttons on the console. “I mean… I know you said it’s a spaceship, but… I’d love to know how it works. Because I’ve seen this sort of effect before… when I stepped into the wardrobe. It was a whole land in there, with many countries, and oceans, and other stuff we didn’t even have time to map before we left, so… is it the same here? Do you just travel with your whole world around you, or is this some sort of magic? Please, how… how _big_ is this place?”

It seemed the endless questions had begun.

It made her smile; questions were always good, and considering that she still had an endless amount of questions about this land he seemed to be from, The Doctor felt relieved. According to their agreement, if he asked questions, she’d be allowed to ask, too.

“It’s _kind of_ a land, but not exactly. I mean… there’s a floor, and gravity orientation, and no oceans to speak of unless you count the pool in the Savannah room.

“I wouldn’t go there if I were you, though, nasty things in that pool. I’ve been meaning to clean it, but I’ve been busy…” her voice slowly trailed off as she looked at the console. “Anyway, it’s all transdimensional engineering; you fold a bigger space into a smaller space and so on. Bit complicated; way past your time.”

The boy scoffed behind her. “You know, I might actually be able to understand a lot more than you think,” he said, walking to stand beside her. She watched him observe all the buttons in front of him. “I did live in a magical land that my little sister found inside a wooden wardrobe, so...”

Well, he had her there. “Should I be calling you ‘Your Majesty’, by the way?” She asked him, apparently surprising him enough to look at her with wide eyes. The smile had disappeared. Had she said something wrong? “Well, you said you were a King, didn’t you? Normally kings are referred to as ‘your majesty,’ so I thought it should ask.”

“No, it’s… it’s just,” he began, and the same sort of sorrow that had shocked her from the moment they had met brightened the brown of his eyes. The heaviness of his gaze on such a young body almost unnerved her. “Some part of me never thought I’d heard anyone address me like that again. I-I mean, you don’t have to. I don’t look… like a king at all. I think, perhaps, you should just call me Edmund… or Ed. That’s what my siblings call me.”

“Not Eddie? You definitely look like an Eddie.”

“No,” He said at once. He _sounded_ much older then. He sounded like a King. “Only one person is allowed to call me that, and she’s who I’m trying to get back to.”

The Doctor lifted her hands defensibly. “Alright, alright. I was just asking, no need to get angry.”

Edmund sighed, and his arms crossed across his chest. “I-I’m sorry,” he said, sighing. “It’s just… it’s my wife. I really…” He gulped. “She’s the one that calls me that, and I-I just… I miss her. I _want_ to be with her. I never should have left her.”

His wife. The Doctor nearly shivered again, but since this time he _was_ looking at her as he spoke about his marriage, she forced herself to remain calm. She was aware that he was technically twenty-six, but seeing the little boy beside her speak about being married simply felt wrong.

Thus, she turned back to the console and nodded. “Well, then, let’s waste no more time.” She opened the coordinator and pushed a button. A little rubber hose came out. “Best that you can, can you tell me where the house with the wardrobe is?”

When she looked at him again, he was frowning. “I don’t… exactly _remember_ much of how to get there. All I know is that we got off at Coombe Halt station and rode for about thirty minutes into the country.”

Well, _that_ was a problem. “What about the person who owned it? I can do a reverse address look up from there if I need to. Or,” She took the hose in her hands and pointed it at him. “I can do a psychic link, but that can be uncomfortable. I’m sort of used to it by this point, but this is a new TARDIS, I can’t promise she’ll be kind.”

“I…” The boy frowned. “I know the name of the owner. He’s the Professor. Digory Kirke. He’s the one I told you gave us asylum when the bombs started falling in London—I’m sorry, what’s TARDIS?” He asked as if on the same thought.

The Doctor scoffed. “This, of course!” She motioned all around her. “My ship. The TARDIS. It stands for Time and Relative Dimensions in Space, if you must know, but we all just call her TARDIS. Say nice things only, she’s touchy.” The console whined. The Doctor winced. “Shh, I didn’t mean it. You know I didn’t mean it.” She stroked the top of the console.

Beside her, Edmund had started looking like a boy again. He was smiling, looking up at the ceiling and all around him as if with brand new eyes.

As she typed the Professor’s name into the TARDIS, the boy’s hands fell to his sides. “I wonder if the wardrobe could have been created by someone _like_ you,” he muttered so mindlessly she didn’t know if she was supposed to reply. “The Professor said it had been made off of a tree that grew from a seed from a Narnian apple, but…” he trailed off.

Clearly, he was thinking too much for words to be spoken. So instead of replying, The Doctor left Edmund to his thoughts and focused on the screen in front of her.

There were, surprisingly, six professors called Digory Kirke in Europe, but only two of them were in England. One of them was newly graduated from King’s College in Cambridge, the other… “Aha! There he is. Got it; hold tight!”

The boy didn’t do as he was told, but the excitement in The Doctor’s hearts was too much. After all, normally, she was the one leading others into foreign worlds; this was the first time in a long time that she was the one being led. She pushed the lever, and the TARDIS began to groan beautifully and familiarly into her ears.

“Whoa!” Edmund said and was barely able to hold on to the nearest railing as the world all around them began to tumble and turn.

Excitement began to shine in The Doctor’s eyes, and mischief twitched the corners of her lips. She felt like a sailor who had been too long at sea and suddenly came across land. A brand new world; something she had never before seen. The very thought made her giddy, and when the moans of the TARDIS began to subside, she felt like she was more than perfectly ready to jump out of her shoes.

“We’re here!” She called, and barely had the words left her lips before she started running in the direction of the door. Perhaps she should have worried a little more about Edmund, who seemed so confused that it was a shock he was still on his own feet. Instead, The Doctor opened the door, and pocked her head out.

Considering that they hadn’t travelled further than the next county, she shouldn’t have been surprised to find that it was still night. Everything around her was dark as she walked out of the TARDIS, except for a couple of windows in the enormous home she seemed to have landed in front of. It was so big, she felt like she should call it a castle instead of a home, and that fact alone made her smile grow.

“You know, now that we’re here, I’m not surprised you found something weird in this place,” The Doctor said once she felt the presence of the young boy beside her. She heard the TARDIS’s door close. “I haven’t come here before, this is _very_ exciting.”

“Narnia is not weird,” Edmund said, starting to walk away from her towards the great door of the house.

“Oi!” She called and began to trot in his direction. Thankfully, his legs were small, so she caught up to him after two big strides. “What do you think you’re doing? I know you’re a King, but in _this_ world, you _do_ look just like a child.”

Edmund frowned but didn’t stop walking. “So?”

“Don’t you think it’s going to be a weird thing for the professor to see a little boy at his front door this late in the evening? Not everyone can find surprise visits interesting, you know?”

“The Professor knows me,” he said, as he lifted the knocker and banged on the door. The Doctor hadn’t been able to stop him. She looked around rather curiously. She was not used to being the one following someone else. “Besides,” Edmund continued, “He went to Narnia when he was younger, too. He was there when it was created, actually.”

The door opened, and The Doctor wasn’t able to ask the very question she had gasped so loud to be able to ask. Someone who had been there at the moment of a world’s creation?! Suddenly she felt more excited than when the boy had first told her his real age.

“Ah, Mrs McGrady,” Edmund said, and The Doctor had to force herself to relax. The woman that had opened the door looked exactly like one of the strictest instructors back at the Academy. The moment her big spectacled eyes looked at her, she felt like she was in trouble.

The woman looked to the boy with a frown. “Edmund? What in the heavens are you doing here at this time of night?”

 _I told you!_ The Doctor wanted to say. But the boy seemed so confident she forced herself to remain quiet. “I had a question for the Professor. I wonder… might you please tell him I’m here?”

“At this hour?” The woman, who was apparently called Mrs McGrady, repeated. “Young man, this is—”

“Please, ma’am.” Edmund politely asked; so politely that it wasn’t difficult for The Doctor to remember that he was technically a twenty-six-year-old King. “I would not be here at this time if it weren’t important.”

It was so unnerving that, after a curious look in The Doctor’s direction—a look to which she waved innocently and only got a “Hmph” from the woman—she wasn't surprised to see Mrs McGrady nodding and further opening the door. Edmund looked back at The Doctor with a smile before heading inside the darkness in the house. Obviously, she followed.

“Wait here,” Mrs McGrady said after she'd closed the door, tightening her hold on the gas lamp she had been carrying, and turning towards a huge wooden staircase. Everything seemed to be made of wood, and when the bust of some man appeared in the middle of the staircase through the little bubble of light the housekeeper made as she walked, The Doctor huffed.

The moment the woman was out of earshot, she leaned closer to the boy. “Not very friendly, her. Doesn't look like she likes smiling, either.”

Edmund snorted beside her. “Definitely not. She’s only doing what I asked because, before we left, Professor Digory told all of us that if we ever needed him we could come to him and he’d be happy to help. He said it in front of her, and she’s big on rules.”

“Ha! Good. I like it when rules make things easier; I hate it when they make things difficult.” She began to look around, but, because of the darkness all around them, she couldn’t see much. So she turned to Edmund again. “Since we’re waiting, can you tell me more about this Narnia place? I love surprises, but all of this waiting is making me _really_ curious.”

The smile in Edmund’s lips disappeared. “You talk like you’re sure you’re going to see it,” He said. “You really think we’ll be able to get there?”

“Maybe,” There was excitement in her smile, but hesitation in both the word, and the way in which she stood. “But I’m entirely too curious not to ask about it now.”

He looked down. The Doctor wished she could have said something else, but, over the years, she had learnt that it could be dangerous to make promises she might not be able to keep. After all, she had left Amelia Pond alone for twelve years after promising that she would only be gone for five minutes, and guilt still clawed over her stomach for those years of intense judgement and impatient longing that her friend had never been able to get back. She refused to make that mistake twice. So she cleared her throat.

“It’s a beautiful place,” Edmund said before she could ask again. He settled his hands into his pockets and took a deep breath. “My brother, sisters and I were Kings and Queens, and we lived in a castle… Cair Paravel.”

“All four of you?”

He nodded. “We, uh…” He cleared his throat. “We fought wars, and defended the land, but… when there was peace, it was beautiful. The trees would dance, the fauns would sing, and the talking beasts, they were merry all around.” The Doctor’s smile began to widen. Dancing trees? Talking beasts? Suddenly she had a million and one more questions. “I guess you could say it’s a very medieval place, with the castles and sword fighting and all of that, but… it’s not like here.

“Women are equal to everyone else, no one cares if two men or women kiss, and bravery or courage are proven, not assumed. And the people…” He smiled again, shaking his head. “They loved us, and even though we were their monarchs, it was like we were part of them. We used to dance together during Helen’s Day or our birthdays, we used to sing, and on the three royal weddings of our reign, they celebrated as loudly as they did on our coronation. It was a wonderful… wonderful country.”

“It sounds it,” The Doctor said. “I’m sure it still is. I’ve never heard of dancing trees or… talking beasts.”

“Oh yeah, almost every animal in Narnia can talk. And, of course, there’s Aslan. He is… the King of Kings, if you will. The one that rules over everyone else. He’s a lion, a talking Lion, and He… well, you can ask the Professor more about it, but, He’s the one that _created_ Narnia. He’s kind and forgiving, and… Lucy, my younger sister, she has a much closer relationship with Him than I do, but He’s good. _Very_ good.”

A talking lion that _created_ the world the boy was king of? The Doctor could have jumped with excitement. How had that happened? How had a portal to that world been created through a wardrobe? Truthfully, she would have asked that and many other questions. But at that moment, a tall man with white hair and a big white beard pocked his head down the stairs.

“Edmund?” The Professor called, and both The Doctor and the boy looked up. The man was in his night clothes, making his way down the stairs, carrying a gas lamp, and frowning. Somehow, he looked to be the complete opposite of what the housekeeper was. He seemed friendly, approachable, and kind. “I thought Mrs McGrady was joking when she said you were here,” The man said. “Where are the others? What are you doing here? And, pardon my rude query, ma’am, but, who are you?”

The Doctor’s lips parted, but it was not her voice that answered. “I left the others back at the school, they don’t even know I’m here, but it was imperative that we saw each other. Professor, this is…” Edmund frowned, and looked back at her.

She smiled and reached out her hand. “The Doctor. First name and surname unmentionable, just call me Doctor. That’s my name. Or the Doctor. Or Doc, whatever you wish, I’m not picky.” The professor took her hand and she shook it rather excitedly. “I have _so_ many questions, Professor. So many; Edmund was just telling me more about Narnia, and how you were—”

“I was hoping you would let me show her the wardrobe, sir.” Edmund interrupted, and Professor Kirke looked in his direction with a confused frown. “She’s a time traveller, and she brought me here in her spaceship… it’s all true, I swear.” He’d had to say that. The Professor had looked almost too sceptical. “She’s… she thinks she could get traces of Narnia from the wardrobe and somehow get us back there.”

“But that way is closed,” the Professor said, letting her hand go.

“Yes, but I am hoping there are interdimensional traces or particles left over,” the Doctor said, smiling. “My theory is that I can channel into them, transfer the information into the TARDIS, and get all of us into that world with no problem and perfectly in time for tea.”

“Please, Professor,” Edmund begged beside her; sounding, for the first time since they had arrived to the big house, like a child. “If there’s a possibility to get back… I _need_ to try.”

After looking questioningly at the Doctor—who smiled and actually had tried her hardest to stop bouncing in her heels from excitement—the Professor nodded. “Right, follow me.”

So they did. 


	4. WARDROBE

Some moments later, The Doctor was on her knees, waist-deep in the dark wooden wardrobe that Edmund and the Professor had led her to. The coats weren’t hard to get through, and though the wood looked perfectly ordinary, the sonic began giving her signals that definitely did not entirely make sense with wood.

“How did this wardrobe come to end up here?” She asked, placing the sonic on the floor of the wardrobe and sitting on her feet to rummage in her pockets again.

Surprisingly, it was Professor Kirke who answered. “I commissioned it a long time ago.” Edmund had reassured him that he could trust her, so he’d become a little more open. “It’s made from the wood of a tree that grew from a Narnian seed. It’s a long story, but… that seed came from the same apple that cured my mother of an illness that… up until before I went into any magical world, was killing her. After eating that apple, she lived to old age.” 

The Doctor gasped and turned back to the wardrobe. “Fascinating,” she said. “Does the whole thing have healing abilities, do you think?”

“I-I’ve… I’ve never tried to see.”

“Mind if I take a sample?” She asked, pulling a little knife out of her pocket and a little plastic bag. “Might be easier to slip a splinter of it into the TARDIS; I can gather more data like that. Loads of information, a splinter. It’s all I need, really.”

The Professor looked at the boy with a little frown. Edmund smiled. “Her ship. She’s got a lot of machinery in there, sort of like that pen thing she used before; she has funny names for everything, but… trust me, it makes sense.”

“Oi!” The Doctor complained. “I do not have funny names! You’re just not used to hearing words like sonic and transdimensional yet. It’s too early in your world for that sort of talk; nuclear is the closest thing you have to what I mean, and you use it for all the wrong reasons. Now, sample?” She lifted the little bag and shook it.

The professor made a little noise and nodded, shrugging.

“Brilliant.” She turned back to the wardrobe and climbed in again.

She was working the knife carefully against the wood to be able to get a small piece when the professor cleared his throat behind her. “Would you terribly mind if I asked you a question, ma’am?”

“Mind?!” She exclaimed, almost cutting herself from the excitement. “Of course I don’t mind you asking questions. I love questions. I love giving answers and asking questions myself.”

The professor laughed nervously. “Right, well… I have let you into my home and into one of the most secrets part of my life because Edmund here has vouched for you, and I trust him entirely, but…” When the little piece of wood fell into the little bag, The Doctor turned to look at him.

He was frowning, and behind him, Edmund’s lips had pressed into a line. “What exactly _do_ you do, and why are you helping this boy get back to… get back to this world you’ve clearly neither seen nor… according to what you’ve both explained, even heard of?” 

“Why not?” The Doctor asked, finally standing from the ground with the little bag in one hand and her sonic in the other. She was smiling. “As Edmund said, I’m a time and space traveller; I go to a lot of places. A lot of worlds, and planets. Sometimes I get calls for help, and I do my best to answer them. Sure, _he_ didn’t call me,” She motioned with her sonic to Edmund. “But we met and he asked for my help, nonetheless; though it was more like I offered it, actually. He accepted it, so here I am.

“Besides; like you said, in all my time alive I’ve never heard of a place called Narnia. Much less of talking animals that aren’t alien themselves. So I’m helping, which is _what_ I do, _and_ I’m discovering new lands, which is something I _love_ doing. Sort of like a hobby, really. What’s not to like? And who better to show me into the world than one of its kings?

“Well, perhaps someone who was there to see it be created. So you’re proper welcome to come with us if you fancy, professor. I still have a lot of questions to ask _you._ ” She concluded and began walking in Edmund’s direction again.

Only until then did the Professor move, closing the wardrobe and leaving his hand on the lion handle. “N-no, I… I would love to see the old world again, but… I believe Mrs McGrady would curse my name if I left her to deal with the paperwork of ownership transference of this place to the local museum.”

“Wait, you’re…” Edmund’s arms fell to his sides. Suddenly, his face looked trodden with sorrow. The doctor pocketed her sonic. “You’re selling the house?”

Disappointed, the Professor crossed his arms. “I’m afraid so, my boy. I can no longer keep up with the cost of maintenance. I’m too old, you see, my work is not enough.”

“But… what’s going to happen to the wardrobe? What’s going to happen to _you_?”

“Oh, never mind me or this old friend.” The Professor said, waving a hand in the air and smiling. “The wardrobe will come with me, and I will move to the city, near Polly. With the money the museum will give me, and my savings, I will be able to find a good-sized home there. I can continue tutoring the children and writing, all else is inconsequential.”

“But—”

“Ah, never you mind, my boy, please.” He interrupted and began walking away from the fascinating piece of furniture The Doctor had been visually studying for the past few minutes.

From the little iron handle in the shape of a lion’s head to the many intricate wooden carvings of centaurs, trees, and other mythical creatures on the doors, she was completely enthralled. Fascinating did not really seem like the right word anymore; impossible, magical and absolutely mind-boggling felt a little more accurate.

When the Professor set a hand on her shoulder, she looked back at him. He’d also placed a hand on Edmund’s, and he was smiling at them both. “You both have a world to get back to. So go.” He turned to Edmund. “Narnia will surely have missed you while you’ve been gone.”

Though the boy softly smiled, he didn’t seem as glad for the man’s words as the Doctor did, and for once, she didn’t _try_ to understand. There were still a lot of things about Narnia that she did not know; things like how it had come to exist, who the Professor was to that world, and who he was to Edmund. But now that she had a sample from the wardrobe, more explanations, and the Sonics’ readings, her urgency for answers had taken a back seat to her urgency to _see_ this world. She could always visit the Professor again.

“Well, let’s go, then!” She exclaimed because of it, holding the little plastic bag with the sample and turning on her boot.

“Wait,” Edmund said, holding her arm for a moment yet looking in the Professor’s direction. “I thought The Doctor seeing the wardrobe the most important of our goals, so it couldn’t wait but… I wonder; could I have a cloth or a band-aid? I’m afraid I hurt myself escaping from the school.”

The Professor’s brows lifted, and The Doctor’s heart fell to her feet the moment Edmund motioned to the dry blood on his knee. How could she have missed that?

“Escaping?” The Professor laughed. “My, some things will never change, will they? Come along. I believe I have a first aid’s kit from earlier in the year.” He turned towards The Doctor. “May I tell my housekeeper to prepare you a cup of tea while I tend to His Majesty?”

The Doctor shook her head. There was a knot in the middle of her throat that would not let her speak. With a nod, the Professor began leading Edmund out of the room. She followed behind them with a frown in the middle of her forehead.

The boy had gotten hurt. No more than a tiny grace against the knee that she had been witness to him dealing with as if it was not a big deal, but he had gotten hurt. As she made their way into the Professor’s study, she had to gulp.

Maybe the whole endeavour had been a bad idea; maybe she shouldn’t have swept in and stolen a child in the dead of night. Even if he wasn’t a usual child; even if there had been that burning hope and wisdom in his eyes that spoke of a sort of experience that reached far past his age. Should she continue? Should she lead this boy off into some sort of adventure that could get him hurt?

A giant part of her screamed “Yes!” They’re just dashing off on a quick jaunt to another peaceful world, after all. And for all the optimism she felt, for all she knew, even having the splinter from the wardrobe would turn out to be a dead end. They might never reach that land he was so desperate to find, and, surely, that had to mean that there was little opportunity for things to go wrong.

 _Things_ _can’t go wrong_ , she thought, smiling as the Professor spoke happily about the time Edmund and his siblings had last been in his home. She would not allow a child to be hurt—further than that little scratch—under her care. She just wouldn’t.

Rule number one: do no harm.

♦

Sometime later, Edmund and The Doctor were being walked to the big house’s front door by the Professor himself; both of them carrying a little pack of sandwiches prepared by Mrs McGrady. The Professor had insisted they accepted something to eat regardless of the endless amounts of times the Doctor had reassured him that there was food in the TARDIS.

Edmund, of course, had completely understood. After all, until _he_ had seen the inside of her ship with his own eyes, it had been hard for him to believe that there were more than two chairs and enough space for three people to stand inside. Therefore, the Professor’s disbelief that the ship was big enough to get lost in, let alone carry three fully packed kitchens—or so The Doctor has said—was perfectly understandable.

Regardless, with a smile, a mended knee, and a big thank you from both him and The Doctor, Edmund found himself walking away from his refuge into the darkness of the night. Toward the small blue police box that had become his last and only hope.

“Great man, he, isn’t he?” The Doctor asked as she fished in her pockets for her keys.

Though she wasn’t looking at him, Edmund nodded. “He’s the only reason all four of us were able to stay sane when we came back from Narnia.” He was paying too much attention to the cloth with which Mrs McGrady had wrapped his sandwiches. “He’s a truly great man. He should have been a King himself.”

The door of the police box opened, and The Doctor stood aside to let him in first this time. “I wonder if you could tell me more about that,” She said, walking in behind him and balancing her own sandwiches with one hand. “I remember you said you and your three siblings were all Kings and Queens; I’ve known of council-run planets and countries being run by the people, but I don’t think I’ve ever heard of a place ruled by four monarchs at the same time.

“How does that work? More besides, how did you, an English boy end up becoming King of another world? Don’t get me wrong, I believe it, I’ve become the protector of so many worlds by this point, you’d probably take a whole hour saying all my titles, but… I’d like to know more.

“I know how you got into that world, I know some of what is inside, I know how you left it, but… what happened _in_ it? What else should I expect? I’d like to know _your_ story if that’s alright?”

By this point, The Doctor had reached the console, set their sandwiches aside—in a little fridge that came up from the ground and disappeared almost as quickly—and began pressing buttons. Edmund had simply followed her with his eyes, frowning. She wanted to know his story.

By Aslan, the face he wore reminded him too much of the most horrible parts of it, and he didn’t know if he could bear to say it all in front of her.

She was no longer a stranger; that much was true. But she also didn’t _know_. To her, he was just a man trapped in the body of a child who was robbed of his life. Just a sad King who was good and loved by his people. She didn’t know of his treachery, she didn’t know of his aberration to cold, she didn’t know that he had taught himself to fight with two swords for the sake of his sanity. She simply didn’t know. Would she think differently of him if he confessed all he had done? More importantly, was there a way of telling his story _without_ speaking of his betrayal?

“Have I crossed a line?” The Doctor asked once his silence became too long. When he looked at her again, she was retrieving the little plastic bag with the wardrobe’s sample from one of her pockets. “I tend to do that quite easily, actually. Got told off plenty of times, too. Feel free to do the same; I’m just curious. Very curious. Especially when it’s about a land I’ve never heard of.”

After a moment, Edmund’s head shook. “No, it’s… it’s alright, I just.” He gulped, and sat down in the first chair he came across. It was only steps away from The Doctor. “I’m not proud of some of the things I did. Nor have I spoken about them other than with my siblings and… and my wife.” But he had never lied about it, either. He had never pretended to be good towards those who did not know his past, he had never hidden it.

The difference was that, in Narnia, everyone had already known.

“Well, how about this,” The Doctor said, pulling his attention and using a pair of small pliers to retrieve the wooden sample from the bag. “You tell me your story, this story you’ve only told to the closest of your people, and I’ll tell you mine. A story only _my_ wife, my greatest enemy, and those involved know. You asked me where I was from, and I wasn’t willing to answer. Well… a story for a story. Seems only fair.”

Though Edmund frowned, the idea of getting the answers he had been dying to know from the moment she told him she was from another planet made him pause. On the one hand, he had enjoyed being liked and respected by this magical woman; on the other… he gulped again. Fear of her reaction would stop him if he didn’t stop it first. So he nodded. “Alright.”

“Brilliant,” she said, turning away from him and towards the console before opening a little metal drawer. “We can exchange stories while the TARDIS separates this into its components. If my theory is right, traces of your world should be left within the deepest threads of the wood; the bits grown from the original seed. I feel like I can’t wait, but, I will have to. We both will. At least we’ll have something to talk about now.”

After setting the piece of wood in the drawer, closing it and pressing some more buttons, the Doctor sat on the floor before Edmund, crossing her legs, and looking up at him the way his son might have done to hear one of his stories. “Now, you first.” She said. He cleared his throat. “Tell me your story.”

After nodding, he did.

For a few minutes, Edmund Pevensie spoke about everything he hadn’t spoken about for years, just as he planned to do with his children. He told the doctor about how he had gone into the wardrobe, hoping to bully his younger sister about the land she claimed she had found. He told her about the woman he had met and the horrible promise he had made. He told her about how much that woman had tortured him, how much he had helped her, and how many creatures had died because of him.

Then, he told her about the rescue by Aslan’s army, and how both He and his siblings had forgiven him and accepted him into their ranks with wide arms. Unsurprisingly, at that point, The Doctor had frowned, but when Edmund looked away, her words were kind. “It’s alright.” She said, setting a hand on his uninjured knee. “I’ve done some awful things, too. Yet, it’s because of it that I know: we are not the things we did, but the things we learn and the things we do _now_. You _were_ bad. Not anymore.”

He wished, more than anything, that he could agree. But even now, even sixteen years after his treachery, some part of him continued to be unable to forgive everything he had done. For it, he mindlessly nodded and went on.

The Doctor listened to his story with patience and excitement, especially when he told her all about the prophecy he and his siblings were able to fulfil during the Battle of Beruna. And when the time came to talk about his coronation and the first time in which he saw who would later become his wife, a smile and a sense of hope lit his heart.

He told her about how much he and Juliet had hated each other. He told her about how awful he had been to her for years. He told her about the time he had first realised that what he felt was not hatred, but infatuation; about Peter’s proposal and his own broken heart. He watched The Doctor’s expressions shifting from sorrow to excitement and enchantment as he told her about Juliet’s refusal to Peter and how she had accepted to go with him to Susan’s coming of age Ball. And when he told her of the way they had kissed in the middle of that torch-lit hallway, she actually happily sighed.

If she had been on a chair, Edmund was sure The Doctor would have been at the edge of her seat. Because as he told her of all the battles he had to fight with Ettinsmoor and then Archenland as he dealt with his own feelings for Juliet, the woman in front of him ooh’d and ah’d quite a bit. When he spoke about his wedding, her face rested against her hands, and she smiled, but when the long story of their childbearing woes began, he could have sworn a tear or two had made her eyes glisten.

“Come to think of it… I don’t even know if the child Juliet was pregnant with when I left lived or died. And I…” Here, a knot finally took over her throat again. This… it was the part of it he had never spoken of. Not even with his siblings. “We… we were talking about names. I told my daughter to tell Juliet I’d be back for dinner, and… I wasn’t. If I’d known… if any of us had known.” He could simply no longer go on.

The child turned exiled king lay shattered at The Doctor’s feet.

The woman got up from the ground and hugged him. If it had been any other day or any other person, Edmund would have pushed her away, told her to mind her own business and walked away. But this was The Doctor, the woman who had brought hope back to him, the woman who had treated him like an equal and even offered to call him by his righteous title upon learning he was a King. Having already trusted her with his life in Narnia, he didn’t see the point of pulling away.

So he hugged her back. “I’m sorry you had all of this taken from you.” She said, rubbing his back like Lucy might have done. “Now more than ever, I-well, I can’t promise,” She let him go, but didn’t sit back down. “But I will try my hardest to get you back, honestly, I’m—OH!” She exclaimed.

A loud sound had come from the console, and it had made The Doctor jump. “I’ve told you not to do that!” She exclaimed to the air, and Edmund simply looked around him.

She was talking to the machine again.

As he tried to compose himself, The Doctor began pressing buttons on the table. And when she pulled the little screen toward her, her expression of concern immediately changed into joy. She actually jumped with excitement. “AHA! I was right! I knew it! I had to be right; I wanted to be right, but you know, just because you want something it doesn’t mean that it will be. But this time it is!

“Oh, the components are completely incredible!” She said then, and Edmund stood and walked to stand beside her. On the screen, there was a picture of the wooden sample and a number of layers to it he never would have believed it to have. “It’s like the wood itself is dripping with a foreign sort of atom and… it changes.” She gasped. “Are those _music notes?!_ ”

“What… are those things?” Edmund asked with a frown, pointing at the symbols all around the wood. “Is it more of your language?”

“You bet it is. The TARDIS can’t translate all of it, it’s so foreign, so it gives me the information in words I am sure to understand. Oh, this is good. This is very, very good!” She said joyfully, swiping the screen with her finger. When she did, a lot more words and symbols appeared. “Now, if the TARDIS checked for interdimensional information like I told her to, processing the foreign data, and comparing it to the library of reports we already have, then—YES! There they are. They’re like nothing I’ve ever seen before, but they’re unmistakable. I have them; I have the coordinates.

“Edmund, I know I owe you a story, but, what do you say?” She asked, then, turning to look at him with a smile as big as when they had first met, and reaching for the same lever she had pulled to transport them from the school to the Professor’s house. “Are you ready to go back home?”

It was like his heart fell all the way to his feet. He was going back to Narnia.


	5. NARNIA

The wheezing and groaning of the ship’s machinery seemed drowned by Edmund’s heart against his ears, and when a thud announced their arrival, he could barely breathe. His hands were trembling, his lips were parted, and when the woman started talking, the echoes of his own emotions didn’t even let him hear. His eyes were completely focused on the door; a door he had crossed only three times up until that moment, but suddenly appeared to be the most beloved piece of housing in the world.

Could it be?

The Doctor’s hand reached for him as he began to walk toward it, shaking him from the hope and fear that twisted in his mind. For the first time since they had become friends, Edmund frowned heavily at her. “…Surely, a king needs a better outfit than that.”

“What?” He asked. It was as if there had been ringing in his ears up until that moment.

“An outfit. I _rarely_ get changed, but I have a bunch of clothes that you could choose from. I don’t know what Narnian dress is like, but—”

“Oh, no.” Edmund interrupted, finally relaxing. “No, I… I don’t want to change. I came dressed in English clothes the first time, I’m not-I don’t care about the way I look right now.” With that, he began to walk in the direction of the door.

After a little “Hm,” steps began to follow behind him.

His hands were trembling still by the time one of them wrapped around the knob, and when he turned it, it felt as if his heart had stopped. Would he open the door to see the familiar lands of Narnia, or would he open it to find disappointment? Would his heart soar or would it break? Slowly, he pushed the door, and his breath got caught in the middle of his throat.

The first thing he noticed was the field all around them; it was bright with green grass, surrounded by trees, and facing the long distant mountains he had once upon a time been excited to see. When he stepped out of the blue box, the sorts of flowers that brushed against his calves were white and familiar, and as he took a few further steps into the field, the sound of birds singing welcomed him completely into the world.

He was standing in the field into which he had stumbled when he had come into Narnia the first time.

It was so familiar and so welcome that, for a moment, he looked behind him. But where there should have been coats hanging strangely behind the trees, there now only rested the big insides of The Doctor’s ship. And just like that, it all made sense. They were both standing exactly where they would be had they stepped into the wardrobe. All because the piece of wood she had gotten the coordinates from had come from the wardrobe itself.

He was so far from home, but didn’t matter; he was back in Narnia. _It_ was home. And he would have cried and fallen on his knees to kiss the grown grass in front of him if it weren’t for the rather excited voice of The Doctor a few steps ahead of him going: “Oh, hello bird! How are you doing?”

Though the bird on the tree in front of her tweet, it did not speak.

For the first time in more than a year, Edmund laughed. “I’m sorry, I… I don’t think that bird can talk. The talking beasts of Narnia are bigger than their English counterparts; that’s how you can know.”

“Oh,” The Doctor said, waving at the animal again. “Sorry, bird. Never mind me, I’m new.” She turned away from the tree and began walking in his direction. “So I’m guessing this _is_ the place, then?”

Smiling so widely he could have cried, Edmund nodded. “It is. We’re a few paces south away from Lantern’s Waste, which is the part where Narnia actually starts; through those trees,” he motioned behind her. “Cair Paravel, our castle, is in the other direction, past Beaver’s Dam, through the Western Wood, and the fields of Beruna. It’s about three hours by horse, and… probably half a day or more on foot. Though I know a faster way; or, I think I do, as long as the scenery hasn’t changed much.”

“Well, then, lead the way!” The Doctor encouraged. “I don’t mind how long the road is. I like walking, and this place seems gorgeous. I hope we run into a talking animal sometime soon.”

“What about your…” Edmund pointed behind him to the TARDIS.

“Oh, she’ll be fine.” The woman said, waving a hand. “Nothing can get in unless they have the key. And, if we need her, all I have to do is press a button on my sonic, and she’ll come to us. Added that feature myself, actually. Comes in handy now; it would have before, too, but I didn’t think of it. Anyway, shall we?”

She went in the direction of Lantern’s Waste with a huge smile across her lips. Somewhat amused, Edmund followed, running to catch up to her longer legs, and stopping her from going too far.

After a while, they were walking down the right roads.

♦

As they walked, Edmund tried explaining things around them to The Doctor. From Beaver’s Dam and the monument he and his siblings had commissioned to be built there to commemorate Mr and Mrs Beaver, to the great stone bridge that he had crossed at Jadis’ feet on her sleigh. At so many points The Doctor got distracted, scanning things with her sonic and asking the boy what was what and what had happened where.

She was so absolutely enthralled by all of it. And when they reached the fields of Beruna—the place where the biggest battle of Narnia had taken place, according to his story—she felt as if she were walking across a historical place. Nothing could have made that smile disappear from her face.

At least, nothing but his running curiosity, which sparked the second they began reaching the other side of the enormous field and his explanations began to run out. “I’ve told you all I can about Narnia and my life here, so… I believe it’s your turn.”

So it was.

At first, as they walked, The Doctor couldn’t even look at him. She had promised him her origins, she had told him that she would answer all his questions the way he hadn’t done to any of her friends, and now that the time had come, she had started to regret it. Even the fresh and beautiful air of Narnia couldn’t make her feel like it had been a good idea to promise something she didn’t want to do.

But promise, she had, and she could not call herself who she was if she broke her word. She’d gone down that road once already. So she nodded and looked over at the boy, whose eyes danced on her features as if he were trying to figure her out.

He looked older, much older than he had before; in fact, he looked different. As if the air of his world had changed him, moulded him into the King he could only pretend to be before. As if everything she had seen about him since she had first met him had been nothing but a mask; here, as they crossed the last line of the field of battle that had made him king, he looked like the man she had believed him to be from the start.

Considering everything he had told her… who could possibly understand and _not_ judge her story better than him? Suddenly she felt like she had been given a great opportunity. And she wasn’t even talking about walking into Narnia anymore.

“Right, well… I said I’d tell you my story, and I will.” She started after clearing her throat. “You can ask anything you want, but there are only two rules: one, don’t ask my name. No one can know my birth name. It’s dangerous, and people would come looking for you if you knew. Second… oh, well, I can’t come up with a second. Just remember rule one, it’s _very_ important that you remember rule one.”

The boy nodded slowly. After a couple of moments, he asked: “So… what’s your name, then?”

The Doctor looked at him with wide eyes. He was smiling and looking at her with a sort of playfulness he had not shown before. Sarcasm. So this was what he was really like. “Right, alright. Ask your questions, then, before I regret agreeing to this.”

Though he laughed, he nodded, and as they crossed the first line of enormous trees past Beruna, he finally said: “Well, of course, my main question is about _where_ you come from, since that was the bit you wouldn’t answer. But, before you do, I have also wondered… how old are you really? I mean, you’re a time traveller, so how does that work? Do you keep track of your birthday? If so… how?”

Well, that was more than one question, but as far as questions went, The Doctor felt happy that it had been what he had chosen to go with first. She somewhat relaxed. “Well, I’m very old, or very young, depending on your point of view. I haven’t really kept track, but I know it’s been a long time. Hundreds upon hundreds of years, or thousands. I don’t know. I stopped counting a long time ago.”

“So you _don’t_ celebrate your birthday?”

“Not really, no. I can’t even remember when it was, it’s been so long.”

“Does that mean that…” He cleared his throat, and when she looked at him again after making sure she wouldn’t trip on a branch, she noticed that he looked somewhat pensive. “Yeah, does that mean that you can’t die?”

Oh, of course. She remembered his story. She remembered the way he and his wife had met, the way he had seen her die twice and been there to welcome her back once she returned. If she’d been through the same, talking about immortality would probably also leave her a little wary. So she shook her head. “In a way, yes, it does mean that, but it’s not like with your Juliet. When something happens to me, I… well, I regenerate. Sort of like, instead of spending a long time without a pulse, I just keep alive whilst my body fixes itself and completely changes.

“It’s more of a renewal of body? It _feels_ like dying, and sort of _is_ dying, so it kickstarts a regeneration process. It fixes all the organs and changes everything that protects those organs. I’ve been a man for ages because of it, actually; this is the first time I’ve come out as a female, this.” She motioned to her whole body with both hands. “Sometimes it’s exciting ‘cause you don’t know what you’re going to get, but if you get something awful, you’re stuck with that for a while. I always find a good thing, though.”

“So you…” Edmund started; beside her, his steps were a little more hesitant. “You die, but you don’t _completely_ die? You just… change appearance?”

“It’s a little more complicated than that, but yes, basically.”

“That must be… difficult.”

“Oh, you bet. I’d never been a woman before now, you see. And when I regenerated into this, my first interaction with a human, they started calling me ma’am. Right confused, I was. But I had to deal with an alien in a hurry, so I couldn’t even look at myself until all of that was dealt with. I like it, though… this. Being a woman.”

“You do?”

“Of course!” She said, stopping in her tracks and leaning against the nearest tree. “What’s not to like? Oof. Can we stop? We should stop. I’m quite knackered; we’ve been walking for hours, haven’t we? Half a day, indeed, look at the sun! Wait, does the sun here work the same as on Earth?”

Though Edmund stopped too, he didn’t lean against any trees, nor start to sit down like The Doctor did. Instead, he simply looked up, well past the treetops and towards the line of light that continued to illuminate their way. “It does, yeah.” He said and started looking around. “It goes from east to west, and… guessing on its position now, I’d say it’s almost sunset. We probably should have rested a long time ago.”

“You can blame me if you want,” The Doctor said, stretching her legs on the ground, groaning, and leaning her back completely against the tree. “I’ve got two hearts, so my endurance is stronger than any human’s. I’m surprised _you_ didn’t tell us to stop.”

Slowly, Edmund sat in front of her, crossing his legs. “I was too excited, I suppose. Being back here.”

“Ah.”

“Wait, so… you’ve got _two_ hearts?”

“Impressive, innit?” She said, smiling, and completely relaxing. “Comes in handy in this sort of situation. Can’t always stop for a rest when it’s needed, you know?”

Edmund nodded. “Well… we could camp here if you want. Cair Paravel’s still some way away. We’ve already walked half the path, and the sun’s almost down.”

“Do you not like walking in the dark?” The Doctor asked.

“Yes, but…” He gulped and looked around again. “It’s just that a lot of things are different. We’re smack in the middle of Narnia… we should have run into someone by now. I think something’s wrong and… even though this is my country, I don’t think I’d trust myself to know my way in the dark like this.” He frowned and looked at her again. “Not without a sword; not anymore.”

“Wait, wrong? What sort of wrong?” The Doctor asked, looking around again.

To her, the woods had looked inviting regardless of their emptiness. The trees were tall and green, the grass was soft under their feet, the sun had been illuminating everything, and there were birds and butterflies flying about the skies. But now that the sun was hiding for the night and Edmund had expressed his concerns, looking around, she felt uneasy.

“I don’t know, just… wrong.” the boy said, looking around just like she was. There was a small frown in the middle of his forehead, and when he looked at the tree behind her, he gulped. “I mean, it feels like it’s the middle of summer, and, if I’m right… the trees should be dancing and talking to each other. They always did that when we were here. But now… they’re silent. They’re still. Just like normal trees.”

The Doctor frowned. “And you’re sure I brought you to the right place? That this…” she motioned around her. “…is your Narnia?”

Edmund nodded. “All the places are there. We saw the monument of Beaver’s Dam and the stone bridge, we just crossed the fields of Beruna, and I’m sure that if we had gone north, we _would_ have found the lamp post. So… this _is_ Narnia, I’m sure of it. It’s just… different. I don’t know how long it’s been since I left... it could be ages.”

“Didn’t you say you’d been gone for a year?”

“Well, yes, a year on Earth. But time passes differently here, remember?” He said, picking at the grass in front of him. “I spent almost twenty years here, and when I went back to England not even a day had passed.”

“Right, and that’s why you’re a kid again.”

“Exactly.”

“So, that means…” The Doctor looked around her again. Wary, and now completely aware of the fact that he had brought a _child—_ no matter how unusual a child—to a strange country that, for all anyone knew, was in the middle of a war. “…it could have been hundreds of years?”

“Or thousands,” Edmund confirmed, making a knot rise in the middle of her throat.

Ever since they had left the Professor’s home, The Doctor had been very much aware of the sort of danger she could have been leading Edmund to, and still, she had done it. _He knows the place_ , she’d thought, and she had convinced herself that stealing a child in the middle of the night for an adventure was a good idea. Yet, now… regardless of the beauty around her and how happy he had seemed to be back, now it felt like the worst idea she had ever had.

Rule number one: do no harm.

“Perhaps we should head back, then.” She said because of it, starting to rummage in her pockets for her sonic. “Back to your school; back to safety.”

“What?!” He exclaimed, getting up from the ground so fast some of the grass around him danced. “No! No way! I’m not going back. Not now, and not ever. What is wrong with— _This_ is my home, it doesn’t matter how different it is, it is Narnia, and-and, regardless of the time, Juliet will be here. I know she will. All I have to do is get to Cair Paravel, I’m sure whoever is King or Queen right now is—hell, maybe it’s even her. Maybe Juliet is reining now that—I’ll go. I’ll go on my own if I have to, I don’t care, I’m-I’m not going to—”

“Alright, alright,” The Doctor’s hands lifted beside her face; one of them was holding the sonic. Clearly she had treaded on fragile waters. “Never mind me, I was just suggesting. I don’t have any weapons in the TARDIS, is all, so I can’t really promise we’ll be safe if there _is_ something wrong going on.”

“It doesn’t matter.” The boy countered with a frown. “All we need to do is get to Cair Paravel; everything I might need is there. Now, we can camp here, and be safe in a small space we can protect well enough, _or_ we can keep going tonight until we reach the castle. I am okay with both of those options, but I will not go back to England. Not unless it is to get Peter and the others, but I refuse to do that unless I know what’s going on here. Unless I know everything is alright. So, you choose.”

“I vote camping. I love camping. I was just worried about your safety, you know? But if I bring the TARDIS here, we can get a bite to eat, and we can find the latest camping gear. I’m sure I can tweak the TARDIS to extend a protection shield somehow, so neither of us has to stay up to keep watch. Or, better yet, we could camp _in_ the TARDIS, nothing could get to us there, or—”

“No, out here.” He said, somewhat more relaxed than before, but still frowning. “I can sharpen a branch into a weapon if needed. I’d rather be out here. I never want to go anywhere that isn’t Narnia again. Ever.”

“Alright, I hear you. No leaving, then, not even into the TARDIS.” She began to get up, grunting when her legs began to hurt. “Though I will tell you, going to the loo in there is much more inviting than going out here. Even for a wee. So if you wanna pop in for that, feel free.” With that, The Doctor pressed her sonic for a couple of seconds.

Moments later, the very welcome and comforting wheezing and groaning from the TARDIS reached her ears, and the blue box began materialising in front of her and the boy.


	6. ACCOUNTABILITY

The next day, after a night of The Doctor’s life stories, Edmund’s Narnian astrology teachings, and some good meals courtesy of the TARDIS and Professor Digory’s sandwiches, both she and the boy continued their journey south. Though, this time, Edmund was armed with a rather large branch he had filed into a point during the night. “I’m a better swordsman than I am a spearman, but this will do.” He had said, and The Doctor, though somewhat disapproving, hadn’t found it in herself to disagree.

Just like the previous day, they left a locked TARDIS behind. They had carried nothing more than Edmund’s spear, a couple of bottles of water and food in a little satchel carried by The Doctor, and whatever else could be found in her pockets. They treaded past silent trees and wild animals, past unknown rivers and new stone formations, talking all the while about every single detail of either of their lives in a way neither of them had done before.

Surprisingly, telling the boy king about the disappearance of her home planet, her role in that disappearance or the near destruction of the Daleks by her hand was not as horrible as she had originally thought. He didn’t speak a lot, much less interrupt her, and when he did, it was only to either, comfort her, or to apologise for not understanding something technical. In those situations, she happily paused and tried to explain. Her life, after all, was anything but linear, and though he understood that sort of situation after growing up to twenty-five and then being ten again, The Doctor knew that it was much more difficult to keep tabs on a story when fourteen different versions of oneself exist at the same time.

He seemed to understand well enough, though. And by the time she was talking about the day she met Yaz, Graham, and Ryan, Edmund was even asking questions The Doctor genuinely doubted anyone else would have been able to ask. Of course, sometimes, she couldn’t actually answer those questions; if she had, the boy’s future could have changed entirely, yet another paradox would be created, and the problems she had finally finished dealing with would have started all over again. But when she explained that, though Edmund seemed unhappy to accept a non-answer, he seemed to understand, too.

Very wise he seemed. And the more and more The Doctor spoke about her life and her many companions or reincarnations, the more she found herself wishing she could take him into more adventures along with her other three friends. But every time she offered, the boy began to shake his head.

“It does sound interesting, I won’t deny it.” He said the last time she offered. They were walking past a long line of trees that he had said would lead into the town of Pevenway just outside the grounds of Cair Paravel. “Getting to know the universe the way you have, the way all your friends have, it’s something I could only dream of. But my place is here, in Narnia.

“Even if you could bring me back to the exact moment in which we left, I would be worried about my country the entire time. I wouldn’t be able to enjoy anything; I wouldn’t be able to learn.” He used his spear to push away some grown leaves from their path, and the faded beginnings of a wall began to become clear. “Besides, I’ve seen the way you look at me whenever the potential of danger comes across.

“Don’t get me wrong, I don’t blame you,” The Doctor had frowned and looked surprised at him. Ready to apologise, but he did not let her. “I’m sure I looked at my son the same way, or even-even my ward, John. I know I look defenceless and small, I know I do. But in here,” He tapped his temple as they rounded a tall stone house. “I’ve fought battles, and lead armies. I remember all of it, more now that I’m back.

“I just don’t know that I’d be able to stand being protected and looked after as if I _were_ actually eleven, much less—” But here, he had stopped, and the smile that had been adorning his lips disappeared as if someone had slapped it away from his face.

The Doctor couldn’t blame him. In front of them, surrounded by partly grown moss, grass, and plants were the remnants and clear ruins of a destroyed village. In the centre of the square there was a shattered pool, and in its middle a statue that could have once been the centrepiece of a fountain. The stones under their feet were cracked and almost covered in grass. There were pillars, parts of walls, and unhinged doors hanging askew all around them, and when she took a step forward, the crushing of bone echoed like a gunshot against the air. She had stepped on half of a skull, and as her eyes lifted, studying every corner she could see, more and more human and animal remains became visible.

This wasn’t an abandoned village. It was the cut and dry scene of a centuries-old massacre.

It was as if they hadn’t been taking at all; as if they hadn’t been walking together. One moment, Edmund and The Doctor were looking around at the shattered homes, shops and remnants of life, and the next, after a short gasp, Edmund was running. He wasn’t even going deeper into the village, but crossing it entirely, ignoring the destruction all around him and leaving it behind to step into yet another line of trees.

“Edmund?” The Doctor called and followed behind him at once.

What had happened? The way Edmund had spoken about Pevenway and Cair Paravel, hell, the way he had spoken about Narnia; it had sounded as if it was a lively and merry place. Full of laughter, dance and celebration. But from the moment they had arrived, the only thing that had met them was silence, ruin, and devastation. Where was the Narnia he had spoken about? Where were the dancing trees and mythical creatures? Where had she brought him to?

Neither of her questions could be answered; instead, the multiplied the moment the line of trees broke into an open and overgrown field. “No,” Edmund said in front of her. He had stopped running and was looking deep a long way past the field. “No, please…”

She couldn’t see absolutely anything other than grass and trees. Some butterflies hopped from flower to flower, but other than that, nothing in the field explained Edmund’s further terror. Whatever it was, his sorrow and disappointment were tangible; they filled their surroundings with an icy sort of chill that seeped beneath the surface of The Doctor’s skin. And when Edmund began walking again, he seemed to be nothing more than the shape of a man who had been crushed by the weight of the whole world. In the size and image of an eleven-year-old, it became one of the most unnerving things The Doctor had ever seen.

“What…” He began the moment she finally trotted up to his side. “…what happened here?”

It was the same question she had asked herself, and now that he had asked it, she didn’t know what to say. She desperately wished she could answer him, comfort him and bring back the sort of joy he had seemed to embrace the second he had stepped back into Narnia. But she was new into his world, and if _he_ didn’t know what had destroyed the village behind them, then how was _she_ supposed to know what had happened in a field she didn’t even know?

So she didn’t talk, and, instead, The Doctor tried to remember everything the boy had told her in the time they had spent together.

Edmund had spoken of Pevenway with such joy. He had told her that the village had been the place where every non-royal celebration had taken place. The fountain had been a place of merriment, the shops all around it had sold all sorts of things, made and distributed by Narnian hands. And just across the small patch of dense forest, the beauty and glory of the Narnian castle had stood. The place where…

_Oh._

Suddenly, with her memories and the much bigger ruins that were starting to become visible in front of them, everything made sense. His castle. That was the reason he had ran; that was the reason he was now crying. His wonderful and majestic castle was gone, and the ruins into which they had finally started to walk were the only thing left.

Now, that, sadly, was something The Doctor could easily relate to. So, silently, she started to cry.

♦

The deeper and deeper he walked into the ruins, the worst his heart felt. He knew exactly where he should be standing; he had recognised the stone stairs he’d had to climb and the ones that should have led to the second floor. They now ended halfway into the air. He had recognised the lion platter he had nearly stepped on and the walls, or parts of them that he walked past. Though the sun was strong and had turned his surroundings into a sadly beautiful medieval ruin, Edmund Pevensie felt like his world had fallen apart for the third time.

There were some parts he couldn’t even walk through, as they were nothing more than great mounds of stone. Those he had to force himself to climb, trying not to wonder just who it was that he was walking on top of. After all, just like in Pevenway, there were bones and skulls hidden or decorated by plants or weeds. Each new one he discovered felt like another knife to the heart.

He could still hear the echoes of his children laughing if he listened hard enough. He could still see the halls like they had been when he had been king if he closed his eyes. The celebrations, the visits, the councils… he could remember every single one of them, and now… all that was left of all of those memories were stones, broken doors, window frames, and the not so gentle reminder that nature was quick to retake a land.

“Edmund, I’m…” The Doctor began behind him. He had completely forgotten about her. “I’m so sorry.”

He didn’t even know what to say. All of his life was spread in ruins all around him, and a certain sort of anger he hadn’t felt in a long time had begun to ignite within his heart.

What the hell had happened?

When he’d left, the alliance with Archenland had been strong. So strong, that not one of their neighbouring countries had even dared to as much as breathe in their direction. They had all feared Narnia. Calormen had been dealt with, Ettinsmoor had become independent, and peace had completely ruled the land. Only the Lone Islands had remained, but they had always been peaceful. The only threat they’d had, had been…

“The Telmarines,” He said. Everything around him started to make sense.

“What’s that?” The Doctor said. They had reached the eastern side of the ruins, and before them, just past the place of the castle in which Edmund had last been merry with his family, spread the beautiful and bright blue eastern sea.

Edmund’s heart was breaking, and as he walked towards the stump that once would have been a chess table, he found himself having to wipe away his tears for the second time. “This…” He cleared his throat. “This is where Peridan and Peter came to tell us about the white stag… I was here, with-

“I was playing chess with Athena. Susan, Mr Tumnus, and Juliet were there,” He motioned towards a big tree; that, at least, had survived. He could still see his heavily pregnant wife laughing with their old friend just under its shade.

Slowly, he turned, taking in every single stone, weed and metal that had once been his home. “We… we didn’t know. We never would have left, but… we could have been here, we could have-we could have saved the people, and this—”

“No. Hey, hey, Edmund. Look at me,” The Doctor interrupted. She bent in front of him, and when she took his face in her hands, he noticed that her face looked sad, too. “Don’t take this upon your shoulders. I know that you’re the king here; I know that this is your country, but… you didn’t mean to leave.

“This, all of this,” She motioned with her head around him; every stone, every skeleton, every ivy leaf. “It could have happened hundreds of years after you left. Even if you had been here, even if somehow you hadn’t left and you’d lived here until you died of old age, this could still have happened. You don’t know what happened, and neither do I, so—”

“But I left, Doctor, I did.” Edmund cried, pulling away from her for the first time since they had met. “You say this could have happened centuries after I left; we don’t even know what year this is and trees don’t grow from one day to the next.

“That,” He’d started walking away from her, pointing back in the direction of the castle’s ruins, “That tree wasn’t here before. There was a door in its place, and this,” he walked further north. “This was once a beautiful stained glass window. It wasn’t hollow, much less completely covered in ivy.

“This is not the work of a few centuries, Doctor, it can’t be, not when—” His words cut out at the same time as a harsh pain crossed his calf, and before he knew up from down, he had a handful of grass in his mouth.

Spitting and puffing, Edmund turned and sat up to see the damage on his leg. When he realised he had simply tripped, though, he looked at the culprit with a frown. It was a rock; a medium-sized headstone shaped rock that definitely hadn’t been there before. What struck him more than the dead potted rose set before it, was that, on the face of the stone itself, there was writing.

IN MEMORY OF THOSE WHO PERISHED  
IN THE TELMARINE INVASION OF **NY.1016.**  
FOR IN THESE RUINS LIE THE REMAINS   
OF TWENTY GOOD NARNIANS.  
AMONG THEM, HIS ROYAL HIGHNESS,  
 **ARTHUR LUCA PEVENSIE** ,   
AGE SIX, SON OF THEIR MAJESTIES,   
**EDMUND** **AND JULIET** , **OF THE JUST CROWN.**   
MAY ASLAN EVER HOLD THEM IN HIS EMBRACE.

The sound that came out of Edmund’s lips was one so guttural and sorrowful that many birds leapt into flight from the nearest tree. He hadn’t even noticed that The Doctor had run towards him and knelt beside him; much less that she had talked. But, this time, when she pulled him into an embrace and began comforting him, he didn’t pull away. Instead, he cried in a way in which he simply hadn’t cried before.

His son, the little boy who had adored him, cried when he was away, and called him Dudmund even after he had learnt to talk, was dead. And if he had been here, if he had not gone off to hunt some stupid stag, he would have been able to prevent it.

He was a traitor, he was a deserter, and now, after everything he had done, he was a murderer, too.

After the ruffling of some plants, as he cried into The Doctor’s shoulder, a soft and familiar voice shocked him from his grief: “…Edmund?”


	7. SOLACE

Both he and The Doctor pulled away from their embrace immediately, but it was his the gaze which looked hopefully all around him. He felt like the ground had disappeared from under him and risen all at the same time. All because of that voice. It was a voice of yesterday, a voice that reminded him of who he had been; one that belonged to the only person he was at all willing to let see him in such a state.

Standing only one step away from the edge of what would have been the northern wall, was Juliet Capulet. His wife.

“By Aslan, is…” She said, dropping the brand new rose she had been holding in her hands. “…is that really you?”

“Juliet?” He asked, and in front of him, The Doctor gasped.

He didn’t even pay attention to her as he began to stand. He simply hurried so that he could run just like Juliet had. When they met, their arms wrapped around each other, and the familiar comfort of her immediately made him start to cry again.

“Oh, Edmund, it is you, it is!” She cried, too. Holding him as tightly as he could remember she could. They fell together to their knees. “I ne’er thought that I—thou art here, my heart, ‘tis you. E’er I have prayed for this, I have, and now…”

“I’m sorry,” He cried against her hair; he didn’t want to let her go. Not now, not ever. “I’m so sorry I left you. I didn’t mean to, I didn’t mean to go back to England, I never did, and now the country… and Arthur, and—”

“I know, I know. Athena told me; she knew, Eddie, she did. The second she told me, I knew you’d ne’er have gone, I knew it wasn’t—that it is _not_ thy fault.”

“I’m sorry, I’m so, so sorry, Juliet.”

“Shh, I know. I know. Please.”

Without being able to say anything more, Juliet and Edmund simply sat there silently, holding each other and crying for every single event and moment they had not been able to share together for so long.

♦

It was a while before the two children—that was the only word The Doctor could think when she saw them—pulled apart. She hadn’t dared interrupt them, for it had been a reunion so beautiful, sorrowful and touching, that, for a while, she had even considered leaving them altogether and getting back to Earth. But the truth was, she would have had to call up the TARDIS, and the sound of her arrival, whether here, or a few meters away, would have surely interrupted everything she simply had not had the heart to.

Besides, she was still curious about Narnia. So she had simply gotten up to explore.

She hadn’t dared to go far, of course. Only towards the great marble fence that would stop anyone from falling into the precipice and towards the sea, but it was enough. With her sonic set in silent mode—of course, she had added a silent mode, its beeping sometimes could be rather inconvenient—she had started studying every single speck of material that she came across.

Just like she had done on their way to the castle, The Doctor had been entirely too curious about this new world to stop herself from pointing the sonic at anything she saw. From the trees to the flowers, and every little animal they came across. But it was there, in the ruins of the castle, that she got lost in the most exciting of her discoveries for what felt like hours.

Wherever she pointed the sonic, the softest and most melodic of songs appeared on her information screen. She would have loved to play it, of course, but her lack of instruments had her simply humming the notes to herself. It was just as she had seen in the sample from the wardrobe. Music. Atoms that somehow turned into music.

Now that was something she had never seen before.

She was so excited that she nearly forgot the sort of circumstances in which she had ended up there. So when Edmund’s voice called her name, a big smile and a jump to her step responded. She waved the sonic in the air. “You wouldn’t _believe_ the sort of readings I’m getting; have you ever seen this?

“Well, of course, you haven’t seen this, not unless you have some sort of supersonic microscope hidden somewhere in—oh!” Oh, indeed. She had tripped on the same stone that had had Edmund falling face-first against the grass. Because of her stature, though, she hadn’t face-planted like him, but _seeing_ the rock had been enough for her to remember.

Getting her bearings, she looked towards the reunited couple with an air of concern. “I’ve been insensitive. I have, haven’t I? It’s not the first time it happens either. I get excited, that’s all, how—”

“Please, Doctor,” Edmund said; his eyes still somewhat red and swollen. His lips, at least, were lifted in a little smile.

So The Doctor pressed hers into a line.

“This is Juliet,” the boy said, looking beside him at the beautiful young girl The Doctor had seen running toward him earlier.

Now that she could see her closely, the first word that had popped into her mind came back. Child. Granted, Juliet looked older than Edmund—at least sixteen or seventeen—and she knew that she was probably as old as she was herself, but the girl was so… innocent looking that the image of the two of them holding hands in front of her simply seemed strange. Like they should, perhaps, be playing make-believe under the supervision of their parents instead of running a country.

Yet, the same sort of wisdom and sorrow she had seen in Edmund’s gaze from the start was hidden behind her eyes. And as she curtsied, Juliet looked as much a queen as young Bess Tudor had all that time ago. “Thank you, ma’am, for bringing him back.” She said, and, with that soft voice and the manner of her movements, she stopped looking like a young girl at once.

“Oh, pfft,” The doctor waved in her direction. “No big deal, really. I may have brought him back, but he brought me into a place I’d never seen before. That’s bigger. Better. Of course, I’m sorry to have come at such a time, but this place is still _absolutely_ fascinating, not to mention—” The Doctor broke in a gasp, and the smile that had been there only a moment ago returned almost tenfold. “Wait a minute! Edmund told me about you! You’re the _real_ Juliet Capulet. The one from Romeo and Juliet, aren’t you?! Though, oof, that Romeo was…” She released a disgusted sound.

With a short look at Edmund, Juliet began to nod. She seemed almost shy about it. “Julieta di Capuletti be my birth name, but… aye, ‘tis me who Messer Shakespeare wrote about.”

The Doctor took her free hand at once and began to shake it. A habit she had picked up from humans. “It is a pleasure to meet you. Big pleasure. Met Shakespeare once, you know? Never would have imagined him to write a story wrong, but—actually, that’s not true. He did take some creative freedom with some of the Kings he wrote about.

“Yours was the worst, though. Very bad. Saying you killed yourself when you were murdered? I’d have a right word with him if I didn’t think it’d change history, but, well. Can’t. Your wrongfully told story _is_ the most famous in the world. It’d break time as easily as a cherry biscuit. Sorry about that.” She didn’t even know when she’d let the girl’s hand go.

By that point, at least, both Juliet and Edmund were smiling. 

“’Tis alright, ma’am.” The girl said, holding Edmund’s hand closer. “You have already done more for me than e’er I could have asked. You have brought me back my husband, and though ‘tis not how I last saw him, for this, you have given both of us much more time than we ever had. For that, I believe I owe you.”

“Nonsense. Someone needed help, so I offered mine. Being here is payment enough. I just… well, I wonder…” The Doctor paused, looking to the ruins beside them and finally frowning. “…What happened here?” She finally asked, looking from Juliet to Edmund for any signs that what she had asked was out of bounds.

When he looked down and simply stood closer to his wife—blimey was it strange to think that of two people who looked like children—she knew it had been alright. So she looked at Juliet again. “It’s just… on our way here, Edmund told me all about Narnia, and it sounded like it was a merry land; prosperous and happy.”

“Aye, it was,” Juliet said, softly nodding. “’Til this happened.” She motioned around them. “When the Telmarines heard that the Pevensies were gone, the four people who had been _key_ to defeating the White Witch, they thought it was the best moment to attack. And… well, they did. We spent one last Christmas in the castle, oblivious to their plans, and by the end of spring, they were here.

“We heard the screams from Pevenway. We saw the fire and the destruction through smoke above the trees, and… many of the workers fled, we managed to evacuate them. But… the Telmarines were quick. More than half of the people who lived here were only able to disperse because of the army. The rest… the catapults took care of them.

“Some days later, Athena, Peridan, Juno, some of the soldiers and I, we came back. We, uh…” She cleared her throat and softly motioned towards the memorial stone Edmund and The Doctor had tripped on. “We carved that. We wanted to recover the bodies, but… we knew the Telmarines would come back. We didn’t have any time.”

“How long ago was that?” The Doctor asked, frowning.

It was Edmund who replied. “Five hundred years.”

“You were gone for one year, and five hundred passed here?!” She asked.

Edmund nodded sadly.

Truthfully, the Doctor would have asked a lot more regardless of the insensitivity. But, at that moment, a rather pretty fox came running from around the same corner Juliet had appeared. “Your majesty! Your majesty!” It called with a rather urgent voice, and at once, The Doctor’s excitement grew.

Finally. A talking animal.

“Your Majesty, we must go. Boats from the river, they carry Telmarine soldiers,” It said, either completely ignoring Edmund and The Doctor, or feeling too desperate to stop and acknowledge them; she couldn’t decide.

“How many?” Juliet asked, looking back the way she had come, and tightening her hold on Edmund’s hand.

“I counted six, ma’am.” The fox said, panting. “I could not see if they were armed, but they’re heading here, surely. We _must_ go.”

“No,” Edmund said. For the first time since their arrival into Narnia, he sounded strongly like a king. “Let them come. Get me a sword and let them come. We can handle them.”

“Ed,” Juliet warned.

“I won’t hear it, Juliet, I won’t.” He said angrily. “I know you must have your daggers, I know it. So let them come. They took something from me, from all of us; now we have to kill _them._ ”

“Oi! No.” The Doctor finally said, forcing herself out of her excitement about the talking fox. “No killing! I was already against you having a weapon as it was!”

Edmund looked at her with a deep disapproving frown. “Doctor these people _killed_ my son. These people—”

“These people _will_ get what’s coming to them, my heart,” Juliet interrupted, surprisingly, before The Doctor could even take a deep breath. The fox silently gasped beside them. “As long as I draw breath within this world, no Narnian will forget.”

Suddenly the Doctor liked the girl a lot more. “I can call up the TARDIS; we can jump in it and hide.” She offered because of it, lifting her sonic in the air again.

“There’s no time.” The girl told her, turning around and pulling Edmund behind her. Come, all of you, there’s a door into a room I commissioned one hundred years ago, we can hide there.”

“But—”

“Edmund, trust me.” She said, turning to him again and holding his face in her hands. “I, too, want to see every single Telmarine suffer. They murdered our son, they killed our daughter in battle, they killed Athena and many of our friends. But now is not the time. We _must_ be properly ready, we have a plan; we _must_ hide.”

Somewhat reluctantly, Edmund nodded and took Juliet’s hand again. Behind them, The Doctor and the fox—who introduced himself excitedly as Hamil—followed. They went past the tree and the remnants of the window into the opposite side of the wall, where a big stone wall remained. It was plain, ruined, fragile-looking, and Juliet was leading Edmund directly towards it.

“I thought you said there was a door!” The Doctor called.

Juliet looked back at her with a sly smile. “Just do what I do, alright?” And with a light curve, she and Edmund completely disappeared.

The Doctor gasped excitedly. “Oh, yes!! A hidden door!! I like hidden doors.” When she curved the corner, darkness engulfed her. She could hear the pitter-patter of the fox’s paws behind her.

“Come on!” Juliet called, startling the Doctor when her voice came much closer than expected. The sound of a lock clicked within the darkness, and, slowly, a soft light began to glow.

A moment later, Juliet, Edmund, Hamil, and The Doctor were stepping down a circular round of stairs that led into a somewhat ruined but beautifully lit round room. It was all made of stone except for the torches all around them, lit regardless of the gushes of wind that came from their movements and the closing of the door above the stairs.

At each corner of the room there stood four intricately carved statues of two men and two women; they all wore crowns atop their heads, and all but one of them held a sword at their sides. Beside them, four greatly carved stone trunks waited, large enough to fit two people in them, at least. In front of The Doctor, Edmund’s eyes began to glisten with tears.

“Months after you left, barely weeks before the invasion, Athena and I came up with the idea of saving everything of yours in the treasury,” Juliet said, finally letting go of Edmund’s hand. “T’was all put together in wooden trunks, and… other than thy wedding ring, everything became buried under rubble and stone at the invasion.

“When we escaped for refuge into the Lone Islands after years of war, I didn’t dare think about you or our family. I couldn’t. Not until centuries later, when our great-great-great-grandson asked me about the old Narnia. It was then that I led the Narnians back here. We’ve been living in the woods since, and… e’er I was lost. Until this.” She motioned all around them with both hands.

“I remembered Athena, and the promise we had made; our idea of the memorial. Thus, _this_ became Narnia’s battle for a while. Soldiers _and_ masons came hence; I was sworn to protect them until this place was completed. We built it underground, like this, so none could destroy it… all with the promise that Narnia would rise once more. That we would _rebuild_ Cair Paravel, and that this room would be part of the new country when we defeated the Telmarines once and for all.”

“By the will of the Lion… your majesties,” Hamil, the fox, said, bowing in a rather peculiar way towards Edmund. His nose nearly touched the floor, and one of his front paws curved as the rest leaned back.

The Doctor smiled. She was dying to be able to scan the talking fox with the sonic, but at that moment, she simply admired the creature. He had been very excited ever since they started making their way deep into the ruins, and now she understood. Edmund was a King; one who had been alive during an old era, centuries before. For a mortal such as the fox, surely, seeing the King alive and in front of him was as incredible as if the legendary King Arthur had returned to England. It didn’t matter how old he seemed.

That alone became enough to inspire The Doctor. “Whatever it is you’re doing to get your country back, I want to help.” She said, making Edmund and Juliet pull away from an embrace she hadn’t even noticed they had begun.

“But, Doctor…” Edmund began, frowning, yet looking at her with the same sort of hope with which he had seen her when she’d said she could bring him back. “The Telmarines are not alien, they’re as human as Juliet and I, they’re… they’re not the sort of thing _you_ fight.”

“Oh, I know. But they’re the sort of people who think they can take something simply because they want to,” She said, pocketing her sonic. “I hate those sorts of people. They’re bullies, and I don’t like bullies. So if I can help you do this, even if they’re not alien, I will. You’ve no idea how many times I wished I could help the fight against the Nazi. But that would have changed history, and—”

“You can’t change history,” Edmund completed, smiling.

“Exactly. _This_ , it hasn’t happened yet, so I won’t be changing anything.”

“Doctor, are you sure?” Edmund pressed, letting Juliet go and walking towards her. The wisdom in his eyes was strong, the depth, the age. All were present regardless of the light flames around them. “You don’t have to. You got me back here, that’s _much_ more than enough. Juliet and I… we can handle the rest.”

“Ah, yes, and I do not doubt it. But just because you _can_ handle it, it doesn’t mean you _should_. Not alone, anyway. So I can help. I want to help. This place… it deserves to go back to everything you once told me. I want to see it; I want to be here when it happens. I _want_ to help.”

So slowly she would have missed it if she’d blinked, the boy nodded and gulped. “Juliet…” He called, looking behind him. “…did you, by any chance, save my sword?”

“Of course; it was one of the first things we saved.”

“Good,” He said, and looked back at The Doctor. “Alright, you may help; with one condition.”

She frowned. “What condition?”

Gently, he began to smile again. “That you let me and Juliet knight you, so that you may truly be exactly what I thought you were when we first met: a _true_ knight of Narnia.”

The frown disappeared as quickly as it had come, and, in its stead, a wide smile appeared. “Oh, I would be absolutely honoured.” And, that day, The Doctor added ‘Knight of Narnia’, and ‘Knight of The Noble Order of The Lion’ to the many titles she already held.

**THE END**


End file.
